


Breathe Me (To The End)

by GideonGraystairs



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Human, Break Up, Coming Out, Coming of Age, Depression, Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, Divorce, Engagement, Falling In Love, Family Feels, Family Issues, Friends to Lovers, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Infidelity, Insecure Alec Lightwood, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Making Up, Marriage, Marriage Proposal, Mental Health Issues, Minor Character Death, Miscarriage, Moving In Together, Musician Alec Lightwood, Non-Chronological, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-23
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-11-03 22:01:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10976199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GideonGraystairs/pseuds/GideonGraystairs
Summary: An out of order recount of the life of Alexander Lightwood, from the eyes of the one who loved him most.





	Breathe Me (To The End)

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted elsewhere on November 19th, 2015.

I hated physics until the moment you walked in, shuffling awkwardly in front of me like you didn’t know the meaning of the word  _ confidence _ .

“Can I sit here?” you asked, knuckles clenching white around your textbook. I shrugged and shifted imperceptibly to give you more room, pretending it didn’t matter to me either way.

“Yeah, I guess,” I tossed out, like I’d even thought about saying no.

 

“Max is sick,” you whispered eventually, still staring out at the water crashing back against the rocks. There were no tears on your face, but I could see them in your eyes. “He’s not getting better.”

I didn’t know what to say. You were always better at this than me, better at caring and kindness and putting others before yourself. I was the selfish one. I had no idea how to be there for someone else.

“That sucks,” I managed, digging a rock up from the sand and tossing it out into the ocean. 

You laughed, choked and disbelieving. “That’s the understatement of the century.”

 

Mr. Rosling was the devil in khakis and tucked-in button-ups to everyone but you. That wasn’t really surprising, you didn’t make it even moderately easy to hate you, but it was vaguely frustrating when I was the only one to get a detention after we were caught passing notes in Math.

“On the brightside,” you muttered awkwardly while I continued to glare passive aggressively at the wall to my other side, “at least now you might actually get some homework done.”

I didn’t, as I knew I wouldn’t, but it was a nice thought regardless. I was definitely still mad at you, though.

 

“I can’t, Mags,” you choked out, the once-affectionate nickname now sounding like a gut-wrenching accusation. I tried to remember how to breathe, how to love you and not have it hurt so much, but I couldn’t think of anything but the coat on your back and the keys in your hand. “I can’t do this, not with her. Not— Not with you.”

“ _ Alec _ ,” I pleaded. I wasn’t sure whether I was asking for forgiveness or a chance to make things work or if I just wanted you to look at me just once before you left.

You shook your head, clenching your hand around the keys so hard I was sure it’d leave marks. I tried not to think of how you were taking seven years of my life with you, how you’d left four of them on the counter between us with the ring off your finger. But I couldn’t because you were the galaxy and I was a constellation and you would always be the space between my stars, even when I turned into a supernova.

And then, just like that, you were gone.

 

You hit me so hard it was sure to leave bruises the next day, angry pains over my chest where you’d screamed and beat your fists just outside the entrance of the hospital. I didn’t tell you he was in a better place now. You wouldn’t have believed me, anyway.

 

The sound on the movie wasn’t working properly, which was unfortunate considering it was a musical and all, but we’d given up after asking twice for them to fix it. You giggled as we settled into our seats again, a small sound I almost missed, and I looked up and caught your eye. They were lit up in amusement, probably over my exceeding frustration at the situation, and the blues of your irises reminded me of the lake my mother took me to when I was eight.

I really wanted to ask you if this could be a date instead of two friends hanging out, but the woman beside us was chewing her popcorn too loudly. Besides, I wasn’t sure you’d say yes.

 

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” you sobbed.

“Well, then what  _ was  _ it supposed to be like?” I spit back.

You didn’t answer. I don’t think you knew how.

 

It was after our fifth or sixth date, when we were hanging out in my room while we waited for my mother to finish making us dinner. You’d just finished dissecting my bookshelf— which was mostly CDs and not actual books —and had settled back on the bed beside me. I felt a jittery spark of happiness fly through me when you let your head fall onto my shoulder, but I didn’t say anything. The silence was comfortable.

You must not have thought so, though, because a moment later you were inquiring softly, “What’s your darkest secret?”

I thought you were probably looking for something funny, like how I actually hated One Direction or used to dance around the house in a tutu when I was three, and I was about to give you just that when I turned my head and caught the way you were staring fixedly at the green wall across from us. I swallowed, bit my lip, and turned away again.

“I don’t know,” I said. “What’s yours?”

I felt your breath hit my neck in a gust of warm air. “I don’t know,” you muttered back.

You were always a better liar than me.

 

“Who was that?” you asked in the tone you always used when you were trying to be casual about something you weren’t actually feeling very casual about.

“Just a friend,” I brushed you off, hoisting my bag up higher on my shoulder as I passed you.

“Oh,” I thought I heard before you were taking the steps two at a time to catch up. “Right.”

 

You were nervous— I could tell by the way your fingers trembled where they hovered above the strings, though the comfortable way you held the instrument spoke to years of careful practice.

“I’m not very good,” you told me, trying to both stall and lower my expectations in the same comment. I smiled, trying to be supportive. You pressed your shaking fingers to the strings, shooting me one last anxious glance.

You played, then, and as you did the whole world fell away from around us.

 

The hospital staff rushed by in a blur of green and blue scrubs, but they felt like they were on a different planet than us on the other side of that door. You didn’t say anything, even when I wordlessly refused to be the one to break the silence. I think you probably didn’t know what to say.

There seemed to be a lot of that going around lately.

 

“That’s Max,” you whispered fondly as the little boy with the glasses turned back to his comics. “He’s going through a phase.”

I laughed, brushing a hand over your shoulders and trying not to be hurt when you tensed up and darted your eyes around the room like your parents might walk in at any moment and see. “I guess they’re going around the family, then,” I replied more bitterly than I’d intended to.

You flinched, glancing up at me with eyes like an exploding star.

“Phases, I mean,” I clarified, feeling bad about the little dig when it garnered no response. Instead, your face went completely unreadable and you turned your gaze back to your little brother on the floor of the living room.

“Yeah,” you said, your tone unrecognizable. “I know what you meant.”

 

“I’m Alec,” you stuttered out, sinking down into the seat beside me like you could disappear into the floor tiles if you willed it hard enough. I grinned, laughing in a way I knew would make you feel less uncomfortable.

“Magnus,” I replied, like there was even a chance you didn’t know that already. “I think we’re going to be great friends here,  _ Alec _ .”

 

_ I’m sorry _ , your eyes cried.

_ Me too _ , my heart whispered.

Both went unsaid.

 

“What are you talking about?” you demanded vehemently. “There’s no way I’m letting you cheat off my homework.”

“But  _ Alec _ ,” I whined, slumping down onto the cafeteria table and giving you the most pitiful look I could muster. “I’m going to fail physics if you don’t!”

You rolled your eyes and let out an annoyed breath, thwacking me over the head with your textbook. “Have you tried, I don’t know, _ studying _ for once in your life?”

“Ew,” I replied, wrinkling my nose.

You lifted the textbook back up as a threat.

 

“Alec,” I breathed as I slid down the bathroom door to the rough carpet floor of your bedroom. “Please, let me in.”

You never did.

 

I heard the clicking of heels behind us long before you shot me your most apologetic look and muttered, “I forgot to tell you my sister wants to meet you.” You were kind of late with that one, considering just as you finished she slammed down into the seat across from me.

“Magnus Bane,” she started in an all-business tone, drumming her deep red nails against the wooden table as you tensed up beside me. “I hear you’ve been hanging around my brother lately.”

She was sort of terrifying with her ‘scratch him and I rip your balls off’ look in her eyes and utter lack of any notable flaws. I did, however, impressively manage not to stutter when I replied warily, “We have physics together.”

“Ah,” was all she said, looking me up and down with a shamelessly judgemental pair of hard brown eyes. Then suddenly her features shifted and she was smiling magnificently, her eyes nearly as bright as yours when you were rambling about frequencies and lenses.

We were going to be friends, her and I. I could just feel it. Well, assuming she didn’t kill me in my sleep before then.

 

“Your mom’s worried about you,” I tried as I reached out to brush your hand. You shifted it back almost imperceptibly and I lowered mine down to my lap again, trying to push back the ocean rising in my eyes. “We’re all worried about you.”

You didn’t say anything.

It was becoming a common occurrence, the silence.

 

I must have been staring too hard for too long because you looked up from your book to raise an inquisitive eyebrow my way. “What?” you asked, pushing those adorable reading glasses back up your nose where they’d slipped halfway off.

“Nothing,” I replied with a grin and reached down to rub the sock-clad feet in my lap. You gave me one last suspicious look, but turned back to your book with a content smile on your face.

_ I love you. _

 

You didn’t usually drink, but that night you were already on your third by the time I’d finished my first. The bartender gave us a curious look, but I ignored it in favour of cautiously sucking back the last few drops of my bourbon.

_ Breathe _ , I reminded myself.  _ Breathing is important. _

“Camille’s pregnant,” I said.

“Whose is it?” you laughed. I laughed with you, like there was anything even remotely funny about this.

You looked like you’d have rather been crying, instead. Maybe I would have, too.

 

I was sure I was going to be the one to kiss you first, but you always were so full of surprises.

You tasted like the ocean and the galaxy, all wrapped in a constellation of the river at sunrise and the wind across the forest.

 

“You have to come see him, Mags.” I’d never heard her sound so desperate before, so broken. I guess you had that effect on everyone, then.

“I can’t, Iz, you know—”

“ _ Please, _ ” she sobbed. “I don’t know what to do anymore.”

 

Your mother smelled like lavender when she greeted me at the door, ushering me in with a warm smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes and an apologetic rambling of why dinner wasn’t ready just yet. I smiled, shook her hand, asked her where you were, and ignored the way her eyes trailed worriedly after me as I mounted the stairs step by step.

When Isabelle had told me the whole family was worried about you, I hadn’t realized how serious she was being. I didn’t know why they were concerned— so what if you were an introvert? That was hardly a bad thing.

Besides, I kind of liked that about you. It meant I didn’t have to share.

 

You laughed until you sobbed and then you kept laughing. I stood braced against our kitchen counter, not willing to meet your eyes as I traced the same patterns across the granite over and over again.

“So that’s it, then?” you choked out on another round of hysteria.

_ No _ , I wanted to say, but that wouldn’t have been fair to either of us.

“That’s it.”

 

“Sometimes I think you’re better friends with my sister than you are me,” you muttered petulantly, shoving your hands into your pockets as your gaze darted off to the side. You trailed behind me like a shadow, afraid to wind up bathed in my light.

I giggled, slowing my pace to match and linking my arm through yours as I pressed into your side. “Don’t be jealous, darling, you know I love you more than  _ anything _ .”

You shot me a vaguely amused look out of the corner of your eye. “That can’t be healthy.”

“No,” I joked back. “We have a very unhealthy relationship.”

 

“You have to talk to someone eventually, Alec.”

Silence.

 

I ran my hands through your hair absentmindedly, staring up at the dark ceiling and wondering why something felt so different tonight. I could feel you breathing against my chest, warm and comforting like it had been for the past four years. You seemed to be asleep already, a rare occurrence as of late, but that theory was quickly rethought when you opened your mouth before closing it again, like you had something to say but couldn’t find the words for it. I knew that feeling well, if we were being honest.

“Sometimes,” you whispered after another moment of silence, “I feel like the whole world knows something I don’t.”

I didn’t want to tell you this then, but sometimes I felt like that, too.

 

"Please, just tell me you don't love me anymore. Tell me you love her instead. Tell me that's the reason," you begged, your eyes like a nebula swallowed by the black hole I’d made of our lives.

I buried my face in my hands and tried to hold back the tears— I didn't have the right to be the one crying here. "I can't do that."

I had to look away from your face then. I didn't want to watch myself break both our hearts.

 

“Oh my God,” you laughed, reaching across the console of the car to smack my arm. “That’s so perfect, I love you.”

I grinned. It felt right, having it said for the first time just like that, so simple and off-hand.  It sounded infinitely sincere.

 

I hadn’t seen you in three years, hadn’t even heard your voice, but it felt like just yesterday that we’d been sitting in that car and you’d told me you loved me like it was as ordinary as the moon flinging itself across the nightsky.

Or maybe that’s just what I wanted to believe. It made it easier to ignore how unrecognizable everything about you had become.

 

It was only the second place we looked at, but I knew from the second we walked through that door that it was going to be perfect. You shook your head indulgently when I asked for the lease after the first five minutes of wandering around the place, like you couldn’t have expected any different.

So I wanted a blue granite counter and a balcony with decorative red railings, there was absolutely  _ nothing _ wrong with that.

 

“I’m scared,” you started carefully, staring down at our hands as you ran your thumb across mine, “that one day everyone I love is just going to forget me.”

I laughed, squeezed your hand, pecked your cheek. “Like that’s even possible,” I offered with a huge grin.

You didn’t smile back.

 

We were sitting in the car after Malcolm’s show, moaning over the free verse french ‘poetry’ and russian ventriloquist, when you got a strange look on your face and suddenly stopped laughing. I frowned, leaning forward in my seat to see you better, and silently reached out across the car to take your hand.

I’m not sure why I didn’t say anything then, but there was something in the way you swallowed harshly that told me it’d be better not to.

“Magnus?” you questioned weakly after another moment of thick nothingness.

“Yeah?”

“Do you—” You paused, took a breath, looked away. “Do you believe in soulmates?”

I stopped my motions of tracing my fingers along the back of your hand, glancing up to meet your wild blue eyes even as they danced away. I watched you for another long stitch in time, careful and wondering and desperate to understand just like I always was when it came to you. You looked… scared, almost. Like if I said the wrong thing here it might destroy whatever hope you had in us.

“Soulmates?” I repeated hesitantly, still watching you with every flicker of attention I had. You didn’t say anything, didn’t even turn back to face me until I reached over to move your head for you. You wouldn’t meet my eyes, sapphire blue seas fixed firmly somewhere just over my shoulder, and it made my heart clench painfully to watch the uncertainty swimming in their depths.

Five years and matching rings and still you weren’t sure we would last.

I let out a quiet breath. “Do you?”

Your eyes snapped back to meet mine, wide and caught off guard like you hadn’t been expecting me to ask your opinion. Or maybe like you hadn’t been sure you’d have one to give. You held my gaze for another long stretch of seconds into a moment before you were letting out a breath of your own and sinking back into your seat. You didn’t look at me when you finally opened your mouth to speak.

“I’m starting to.”

 

“They want to cremate him,” you told me, laughing humorlessly. “They don’t want to have to see the body.”

I didn’t say anything. I don’t think you wanted me to.

“I saw it,” you added, clawing harshly into the sand at your sides. You didn’t move your gaze away from the ocean, the same ocean we’d sat by when you’d told me he was sick in the first place. “It didn’t even look like him.”

I bit my lip, sucked in a breath, turned my head away to stare at the sinking sun.

“It should have been me. It should have been  _ me _ .”

 

“Hey,” I threw out, tossing my pencil onto the textbook we’d been working from. You looked up with an inquisitive eyebrow meeting your hairline as I sat back on your bed. “You’re my best friend. You know that, right?”

You rolled your eyes, a brilliant mix of cloudy skies and blue topaz, reaching out to smack me and tell me to get back to studying. I wasn’t going to pass physics if I didn’t start paying attention to the important parts and stop wasting your very valuable time.

You didn’t have to say it, I could see in the skies how much my words meant to you.

 

“Alec?” I called out, slipping out of my shoes and throwing my coat over one of the barstools at the kitchen counter. “Are you home?”

You were, but I didn’t realize that until twenty minutes later when I noticed the bathroom door was locked and I could hear stifled sobs coming from the other side.

We never talked about it. Maybe we should have.

 

Isabelle’s hand was heavy on my shoulder, an anchor to keep me from floating away too far. I could hear her sucking in sharp breaths behind me, hitches that sounded like thinly-veiled sobs, and I knew she was crying too. She was a much prettier cryer than me, who sat sobbing on the floor of the hospital room with great heaving shakes. It must run in the family.

“He’s not getting better,” she breathed. “Why isn’t he getting better?”

I wasn’t listening.

“I broke him,” I repeated for the thousandth time. “I did this, it’s my fault.  _ I broke him _ .”

Your sister’s voice was soft but certain as she reached forward to run her fingers along your hand, stopping just before she hit the thick bandages around your wrists. “Oh, Magnus,” she whispered gently. “He was breaking before he met you. If anything, you were the one that held him together this long.”

 

I was nervous way before you even opened the door, a thin smile on your face that made a valiant but pointless effort to reach your eyes. Holding up the letter with the purple torch printed pristinely across the front, I gave you an equally slim smile and stepped inside on shaky legs.

I could hear your mother in the kitchen, pittering about as she fixed up dinner for a family that no longer ate together, but I didn’t offer her anything more than a short wave as we passed, heading straight to your room upstairs to lock ourselves away from the rest of the world while we discerned where our places in it would be for the next four years or so of our lives.

Your letter was sitting on the end of your bed when I closed the door behind us, a quiet confirmation of the future I’d been so terrified of for the past six months.

“Together?” you suggested shakily as you lifted the assertion into your gentle hands.

“Together,” I nodded, placing the tip of my finger under the opening.

We both got in.

 

“Sometimes,” your voice was quiet against the roaring silence of our apartment, “I’m not sure I want to be here anymore.”

“With me?” I questioned worriedly, my eyes wide as they tried to trace your figure in the dark. It was no use, you were too far away on the other side of the bedroom.

“No,” was all you said.

You didn’t clarify. I didn’t ask you to.

 

“Do you love me?” I demanded, slamming my hands against the counter in frustration.

You jumped at the motion and the force behind my words, wide blue eyes like the summer sky as they raced across my face. “Of course I do, you know that.”

“Then why don’t you want to have sex?” I spat cruelly. Your face closed off immediately, the sky in your eyes turning dark and stormy as the rain poured in. You stood so quickly your chair slammed back against the ground, slamming your own hands down against the counter as you shot me a vicious look.

“Sex isn’t a condition of love,” you spat back just as cruelly, and then you were gone.

The door banged back against the wall so hard I thought it might send my house crashing down on top of me.

 

"He doesn't play anymore," came a sudden voice from the doorway to the hospital room. I didn't have to look to know it was your mother, but I did anyway. "He used to play all the time. Now, he— He hasn't touched an instrument in years."

I tried to swallow down the sobs in my throat, but they just moved down my face in waning streams of salty guilt. "I'm sorry," I offered weakly, like it could somehow mean something now that it hadn't three years ago. "This is my fault."

She didn't confirm this, smiling thinly in that way only weary mothers on the brink of losing a child could ever seem to manage.

She didn't deny it, either.

 

I hesitated in the doorframe, leaning half against it as I looked into the room and chewed my lip. My eyes found you immediately, darting away after noting the hunched figure on the edge of the bed and the way your shoulders shook. You weren’t crying, I don’t think, but there was something there I didn’t want to have to face.

“Please, Alec,” I begged, though I wasn’t sure what I was asking for. “We can figure this out.” My voice shook, hands gripping the edge of the door so hard my knuckles turned to porcelain. I wished my whole body could have done the same, that I could have just smashed myself to pieces and saved us both the pain.

You didn’t say anything at first, didn’t even move your head out of your hands. And then, softly, you muttered a muffled “Yeah,” without twitching an inch.

Seven years and you were still a better liar than me.

 

“He’s only twenty-seven,” your mom muttered weakly from her seat on the other side of your bed. I didn’t move my gaze from your face and I could tell she hadn’t either. “He has his whole life ahead of him.”

I laughed, choked and wet and dry and free. “I think that was the point.”

She didn’t find it funny. Neither did I, to be honest.

The tube down your throat and the stark white bandages around your wrists weren’t anything even close to a joke.

 

I smiled softly as I ran the pad of my thumb over your hand. You stirred in your sleep, burying your face deeper into the pillows and groaning about  _ just five more hours _ . Grinning even wider now, I nestled down beside you and laced our hands together.

It felt nice, the rings on our fingers pressing against each other.

 

“I hate marketing,” you growled the second my dorm room door slammed shut behind you. I glanced up from my study notes with a start, blinking rapidly to take in your ruffled appearance leaning against the wooden door.

I frowned. “But you’re so good at it.”

You frowned, too. “What are you talking about? I’m getting a sixty-four.”

“But you made  _ such _ a great sales pitch just the other night when we—”

“Oh my God!” you interrupted, snatching a pillow from behind me to smack me over the head with. “Your roommate’s in the next room, Magnus!”

 

I didn’t want to wake you, but you were thrashing so hard I thought you might fall off the bed and hurt yourself.

You didn’t want to tell me what you dreamed about, but I knew it was bad from the way you still trembled all through the day.

 

“I love you,” I tried, my voice shaking and weak.

Still nothing.

 

You laughed like the ocean crashing back to shore, the blue of your eyes stretching into a galaxy of burning stars. It was only our second date, both of us still nervous and uncertain of the other’s expectations, but I think I was a little in love with you already.

 

“The person you are trying to reach is not available right now. Please leave your name and number after the tone.”

_ Beep. _

“Alec? It’s me again. I know— I know it’s been a while, but I just wanted to… check in? To— To see how you were doing. I— Are you okay? Your sister called. She’s worried about you. She says you haven’t gotten back to her in a few weeks, something about a family dinner? I know it’s not my place to call  anymore, but we both thought you might at least listen to the message if it were from me.”

_ Pause. _

“The baby died.”

_ Pause. _

“I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.”

_ Pause. _

“I miss you.”

_ Pause. _

“I need you.”

 

Your mother smiled warmly at me over the kitchen counter, the wine-filled glass perched in her hand almost as red as her lipstick.  I smiled back just as sweetly before turning back to watch you and Izzy arguing over Christmas shopping across the room. Izzy stomped her foot, folding her arms across her chest like she was twelve instead of twenty. You ran a hand through your unruly raven hair, shoulders slouching in defeat, and I let out a quiet laugh.

It was nice to see you acting normal again, your quiet voice whispering how you weren’t sure you wanted to be here anymore just a distant memory, same as the sobbing behind the bathroom door. You were fine, nothing to be worried about.

“He really loves you,” came a sudden voice from behind me, drawing me out of my thoughts. I turned to face your mother with an inquisitive expression, wondering where this was coming from. She smiled again, warm and waning as it twitched towards her eyes but didn’t make the leap. “You make him happy,” was all she added by way of explanation. Frowning, I searched her eyes for some indication as to her intent here and found nothing but blanks loaded in the chambers.

Sighing out a soft sound of flickering sadness, her gaze shifted to where I knew you were still standing on the other side of the room by the tree, though I couldn’t see you as I faced your mother. Her words were even softer this time, almost like she was scared to say them aloud.

“I don’t know where he’d be without you.”

 

The silence was suffocating, a rope wrapped around both our necks to hang us if we left it there too long. You barely moved, one pale hand gripping your baby brother’s and the other clenched in mine. I didn’t move, either. I was so scared that the slightest shift in the atmosphere might drag even the steady beeping of the heart monitor into our silence.

I didn’t tell you it was going to be okay. You didn’t want to hear that— you already knew it wasn’t. It wouldn’t be.

You didn’t tell me that, either.

I think I may have needed you to.

 

I could feel your breath against my neck, warm and comforting as you rested your head against my shoulder, both of us slumped back against the bathroom door. You swallowed, rough and piercing as it bounced over the tub and the toilet and the sink and ceiling.

“Mags?” you tested quietly after another moment. Letting my head fall back against the door as my hands still held my knees towards the rest of me, I made a small sound of acknowledgment but said nothing. I could still feel your breath against my neck, even as your fingers tightened around my bicep and you rolled your head to stare at the ceiling. “You know I love you, right?”

I laughed; I couldn’t help it. It was so like you to try to comfort me when you were the one who needed it the most. I wanted to say that maybe love wasn’t enough, or maybe it was a bad kind of love. The kind of love that tore people apart. I wanted to tell you we should stop here, while we were both still clinging to the edge of sanity, that maybe you should stop starting to believe in soulmates before you finished.

I didn’t. Instead, I lifted a hand to run it through your hair and whispered, “I know,” like you’d never given me any reason to doubt it in the first place. And maybe you hadn’t, maybe you were always so perfect when it came to me, but the nail marks down your arms and the sound of your sobs through the door were enough to make me realize that as much as you may love me, it wasn’t enough to keep you from falling apart.

“Good,” you whispered back. “Because we’re soulmates, you know.”

Sometimes, I wished we weren’t.

 

It was light out, the sun rising in shades of pink and orange stripes across the bedroom. I was tracing my fingers along your spine, holding myself up by my elbow so I could watch you watch the world. Your head was facing away from me, turned toward the rising star, and the contented expression on your face was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

“Marry me,” I breathed before I could think about it. And then I stopped breathing completely, my fingers hitting a red light at the base of your spine. I didn’t move an inch as I watched your face, my heart clawing it’s way to my throat so violently it was sure to leave scars.

You laughed. “What, no grand proposal on the eiffel tower at sunset?”

Feeling a nervous smile twitching into being, I let out a quiet breath and ran my hand up your back again. “Do you know how hard it would be to get you alone up there?”

You laughed again, a melody that floated through the air in C major. “Yeah,” was all you said.

“Yeah?” I repeated, my hesitancy the A minor to match.

“Yeah, I’ll marry you.”

 

Your signature was a familiar swooping of elegant letters at the bottom of the page, so like the one you’d given the day we exchanged vows. Ironic, isn’t it?

I didn’t want to sign away seven years of everything like it was nothing, didn’t want to take back four years of marriage like they hadn’t meant the world to me. I didn’t want to give this up, give  _ you _ up, but somewhere in the caverns of my heart I knew it was too late. I’d lost you already to my own stupid mistakes.

And maybe it was then that I should have realized you’d been losing yourself along the way, too.

 

“He doesn’t want to be here, Magnus,” your sister whispered, gentle tears slipping over her cheekbones as she hovered above your sleeping form. “We can’t make him stay.”

I bit my lip and turned away from the scars along your arms. “We have to.”

 

“You’re going on a date tonight,” I informed you, dropping my bag onto the ground beside our desk as I slid in beside you. You gave me a confused look with half a glare, probably wondering what awful thing I’d done this time. It took a full minute of staring at each other for you to finally give in and just ask me what the hell I was talking about already.

“Alright, fine. I’ll bite. With who?”

I grinned, wide and unabashed as I leaned in to whisper in your ear. “ _ Me _ .”

You nearly fell off your chair in shock, but I know you’d rather I didn’t mention that part.

I didn’t even know you were awake, too busy rubbing my hands over my face and wishing I could hop into a time machine and undo Camille. Or maybe go back even further and just  _ notice _ that there was something wrong. Or maybe just go back two years and call you more than the one time, leave hundreds of messages until you finally called me back. But I couldn’t and I never would and maybe that’s what hurt the most; not seeing you there, like this, but knowing that I was partially to blame for it.

“Mags?” your quiet voice cut through, rough from the disuse it had suffered while you’d refused to say a word. My head snapped up at the sound of it, my eyes wide in shock as they drank in your unreadable features. You were watching me with an exploding star behind the blue, an entire constellation wrapped around it.

I didn’t say anything, barely even acknowledged that maybe you were looking for an answer. Maybe it was the nervous shock of hearing you speak for the first time in three and a half years or maybe it was that I hadn’t heard you call me ‘ _ Mags _ ’ in four. In the end it didn’t matter, I could feel the oceans crashing against my eyes, threatening to spill over and wash us both away.

You swallowed, a sound that filled the room a thousand times more than it should have. Then, softly and without moving your exploding star from my oceans, you whispered, “You have to let me go.”

I didn’t even try to hold back the ocean, then. Maybe it was because I knew you were telling the truth. I could only hold on so long for the both of us.

 

I loved you from the moment you walked into that psychics classroom until the day they lowered your cold, scarred body into the frigid, open ground.

And then, I loved you still. I don’t think I’ll ever stop.


End file.
